Procter & Gamble has registered some unsavory names it may use in the future on the Internet, such as germs.com and underarm.com.

But even we were surprised to see that the company had also recently registered crotch-rot.com.

We knew something might be smelly when we saw, on the official InterNIC registration form, that the technical contact person was an Arnold B. Crotchrot, and that he could be reached at 123 Genitalia Way in Portland, Ore.

A quick call to P&G confirmed that an official Web registration for P&G had indeed been made, but not by P&G. Calling it a hoax, the company is planning to investigate how it happened.

But the tale gets even more malodorous. Our fake technician wrote that he worked at Europa Communications, a real company in Portland that bills itself as the largest online marketing firm in the Pacific Northwest.

Europa President Colby Barron said he doesn't know why someone would want to involve his company in the prank, "but here's something I almost never mention about myself. My great grandfather, or my great great grandfather, on my mother's side, was [William Cooper] Procter, who co-founded P&G."

Small world, huh?

AOL's Mickey Mouse

response to its logjam

So what if service problems led to a rash of lawsuits last week? At America Online, the attitude is, well, comical. "Like anything that's a great value, consumers are flocking to it," said David Gang, AOL's VP of product marketing, in an Associated Press article last week. "Sometimes that means they have to wait a bit, but it's worth it. Think about Disney. People will wait in line for hours to get into Disneyland."

If AOL wants to position itself as an entertainment network, it had better be able to get its signal out. We've never seen "Seinfeld" broadcast a busy signal